Life Studies
by MissMelysse
Summary: Data/OFC. AU. CRUSH-verse. Future. Data watches Zoe, and reflects on the changes in their relationship. (Takes place about six months after the events in First Contact, with flashbacks to one month after.)


**Disclaimer: Paramount owns the stuff you've seen on screen. The rest is mine, but I don't mind sharing. Sometimes. **

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><p><strong>Life Studies <strong>

**Stardate 51364.22**

**(13 May 2374, 22:35 hours, ship's time)**

He has incorporated his observation of her bedtime preparations into his own personal routine ever since he realized that, with the new configuration of his quarters, he can see her in the bathroom mirror from his workstation, as long as that door and the one to the bedroom are both open. (He suspects she leaves them open intentionally, but he does not ask.) The nightly ritual holds endless fascination for him, but he finds, as well, that it is the intimacy of simply being there that is most precious.

He counts the strokes as she brushes her long chestnut hair out of whatever style it had been braided or twisted into during the day. A fraction of his consciousness is spent analyzing that color, and its descriptor: _chestnut. _He knows that the French equivalent, _marron_, is literally translated to _brown_ but finds_ brown_ to be inaccurate. He considers the English version of the French: _maroon_, but his experience with that color puts it too far on the red side of the scale.

Instead of merely naming the color of her hair, then, he defines it by the substances which are brought to mind by that color: bittersweet chocolate (her favorite confection) and soft, loamy soil, freshly turned up, glistening in the early morning rays of a sol-type star.

_"Smell this, Data," she had coaxed him, holding a handful of the stuff up to his face. "It smells like life and hope and possibility." _

_They were visiting her grandmother's farm, ostensibly so the old woman could meet him, but also to give both of them the chance to heal and reconnect after the Borg attack on Earth. It was only a short flitter-ride from her father's beach house, but seemed almost like its own world. _

_He had been reluctant to tell her that, to him, it smelled only of minerals and metal ore and decomposed plant matter. _

She rarely uses the same number of brushstrokes from night to night. At first, when she would stop after ninety-six or ninety-seven, or once, a mere eighty-eight, he would have to firmly order himself not to take the brush from her hand and continue to an even one hundred.

Since then, he has begun to wonder if she stops at those random numbers in order to keep him off-balance.

_They were sharing the porch swing at the farm, enjoying the fresh air despite the winter chill in the air. The porch had a heater, after all. _

_He had given in to her frequent requests that he dress in casual, civilian attire when they were on vacation, and he was wearing a pair of cotton khaki trousers and a blue shirt she had told him was 'chambray.'. She'd been in jeans and a long-sleeved knit shirt all day, and now her shoes were off and her legs were stretched across his lap. _

_Her toenails were painted fuchsia, with yellow daisies on the two largest. He had been aware, intellectually, that some women decorated their toenails, but had never seen it in practice. Most of the women he knew wore boots or closed-toe shoes. _

_He considered the differences in the shapes of his feet (still covered in socks and shoes) and hers (bare, sporting faint tan-lines from her favorite summer sandals), and marveled at the variety of ways they were so very different and so much the same, even while the majority of his attention was on their conversation. _

_"I'm a little afraid of this, Data. Of you and me. I mean, we've technically been together for more than a year, but if you add up the individual days, there haven't really been that many. And I feel like…we're not just 'dating' are we? It's more than that." _

_His response was to tease her gently, using a line she had often used on him when he had been particularly obtuse about one thing or another, "It has taken you this long to figure that out?" _

_"I'm not sure I know how to be an officer's girlfriend. I'm outspoken, I hate hierarchy, I'm reckless sometimes…what if I embarrass you? What if you learn all my secrets, and decide I'm not enough for you?"_

_His answer came with more force than even he expected. "That will not happen." _

Finished with her hair, she has moved on to the rest of her evening tasks. Make-up remover, cleanser (because, she has informed him, one must never use anything as harsh as soap on one's face), rinse with clear water, moisturize.

He believes the moisturizer to be unnecessary, but does not attempt to change her practice. Instead he draws in a quiet breath, smelling hints of mint and cucumber. These earthy, soft, green scents have become inextricably intertwined with her very identity inside his head, and it is fitting, because her very name means _life_ in at least seven known languages.

Even with his emotion chip turned off, he has always found her compelling. Her expressive face, her easy way of moving among people, the way she treats everyone she meets as if they, too, have a story worth sharing, and the way everyone she meets seems to know her - these are qualities he can never quite pin down, but appreciates, nevertheless.

He has watched her on stage, focusing all of her energy into a nearly tangible object as if readying to hurl it outward, skyward, and then pulling it all back until what remained was the essential moment of truth in her performance.

With his emotion chip _on_, he has wanted to touch that energy, and taste that truth, and she has allowed - even invited - his every attempt.

He watches her reflection in the mirror as she completes her ritual. The tubes and bottles have all been closed, the damp washcloth draped over a drying rack, her brush cleaned and set aside, but she is still gazing into the glass.

With a start, he realizes that she has caught him watching her.

He decides he does not mind.

Via her reflection, she favors him with a saucy smile. It is an expression he knows well. It is a version of the same smile she favored him with after her first recital under his tutelage, and at the cast party after their first appearance together in a shipboard play. It was present in the rueful grin she tossed his way when they'd both come back to themselves - mid-kiss - after the entire crew had been affected by engineered amnesia, and in her wistful expression when she'd been accepted to Yale and wanted him to be the first to know.

More recently, that smile, Zoe's smile, had been his first thought when the ship had crashed, had pulled him back from the Borg Queen's temptation, had promised him a lifetime of little adventures that had nothing to do with new life or new civilizations. Well, perhaps new life. Someday.

It was the representation of all the ways in which she was constantly changing, and yet remaining completely herself.

_"That will not happen," he had repeated, pushing ever so slightly against the wooden decking beneath his feet, so the swing would rock. "It is more probable," he had added, "that you will grow bored with me." _

_Her response had been a look that he hoped she would never again direct at him. _

When she leaves mirror, he notices that she is wearing only a faded chambray shirt. His shirt. The one from that leave. Her bare feet are nearly silent on the carpet as she crosses the room, and hugs him from behind. "You're on duty tonight?" she asks.

He knows that she has memorized his usual schedule, but confirming it is as much a part of her bedtime routine as everything he has just watched. "I am. I am sorry."

"Don't be," she says. "We can't treat it like a special occasion every time I'm on the ship, or you're wherever I'm working. I'm going to read for a while. Come and kiss me before you leave."

"I do not like to wake you."

"I won't mind," she says, and then she grins. "Well, I might in the moment, but I'll mind more if you don't."

"As you wish," he says, and she laughs softly, recognizing that he's quoting something she introduced to him.

She leans around him to kiss him properly then runs her fingers through his hair. "I love you," she tells him, and the words warm him.

He thinks he could probably manage his response without his emotion chip, at least now, but it is already active – permanently so, since his encounter with the Borg Queen - and so the words come effortlessly. "I love you, also."

She laughs again, the way that means she's delighted, and heads for bed. At the door to the bedroom, she pauses, turns around, gives him that smile again. "You know, it might be fun if tomorrow you brush my hair for me."

For the next twenty-three-point-six hours he will have that thought constantly vying for his attention.

He decides he does not mind that, either.

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><p><strong>Notes: <strong>Revised 27 February 2015 to tweak some of the flashback dialogue and specify when in Data & Zoe's story this takes place. The main text takes place in May, 2374 (about six months after the events depicted in the movie _First Contact_, while the italics are a flashback to December, 2373, which is about a month after those same events.


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